December 17th

Games history went off the beaten track this week, with pieces of writing and video on alternative and even unsanctioned aspects of the medium’s heritage. Meanwhile, genre-bending analyses and challenging calls for better artistic dialogue abound, as writers unpick the critical issues shaping what games could become in the future.

Lifespans

Writing and documentary on games history has had a fantastic week, with four particularly stellar examples.

Brazil’s Video Game Gray Markets – YouTube (video: subtitles)Cloth Map visits games collectors in Sao Paolo, Brazil, who discuss how games culture there is influenced by a history of dictatorship and ongoing limited support by hardware producers.

“What is exploitive, or more precisely, insidiously self-exploitive, [sic] is that as videogame fans, we’ve shackled our community’s identity to our skill at discerning between nearly identical products, not to our skill of engaging deeply with them.”

Everything Is Going To Be OK

Continuing on from a discussion in previous weeks, Nathalie Lawhead’s work is challenging people to address games with the analytical skill that a work of art ought to demand.

Period Piece — Real LifeJeremy Antley critiques board game designer Phil Eklund’s notion of historical simulation, arguing that history can never be studied in the scientific manner implied by the ideal of a perfect simulation.

“To play Pax Renaissance is to not only re-enact the emergence of Western power but to celebrate it.”

Plugs

We’re preparing our year-end roundup this month, known as TYIVGB (The Year in Videogame Blogging). Don’t forget to submit the articles you read or wrote this year that you want to remember forever! Everything we link to is archived in multiple places, so by submitting you are ensuring that something becomes an accessible part of games history for years to come.